Everybody Dies
by DreadNot
Summary: A collection of drabbles centered around the Millennium characters. Chapter 18. Zorin helps the Captain find his appetite.
1. Doc

_If you refuse, you die; she dies; **everybody** **dies**! _– Arn

ooo

_Everybody dies? They tell us it is no longer true. I don't believe them. I won't believe them. They prattle on, speaking much and saying nothing. _

_Everybody dies. Time dies. Gods die. Someday, I will die. _

_Everybody dies! Don't lie to me! Even the world will die someday; burned in the conflagration of our exploding sun. It can't come soon enough._

ooo

They sat around the conference table. The Major was droning on about glorious destruction and endless war and battle and Krieg. Doc's mind was wandering. He found that since his transformation, there was a constant background hum in his head that would sometimes resolve into words.

The words this time were, "Everybody dies."

He looked around the table, trying to discern on whose mind he had just eavesdropped.

_Joleen? Could be. Look at her. _Mystic tattoos, lazy grin, cigarette clenched in her teeth. She loved death. She loved torture. She loved to have her opponents groveling at her feet, reduced to weeping wrecks before she tore them apart. She met his questioning gaze and raised a mocking eyebrow.

_Shroedinger? Doubtful._ That boy was permanently arrested in his early teens. If he had a thought beyond having his ears, and occasionally a few things more, scratched by the Major, Doc would eat his eyeglasses.

_Rip? Sweet Rip._ She was too dangerous to be as innocent as she was. It was a cosmic joke that the side-effect of her undeath was such a deadly skill. Her bullets were amazing. Doc's mind wandered still more as he mulled over replicating her unique ability.

_The Major? Too obvious. _The Major had been engaged in mental masturbation at the thought of global destruction for so long that Doc doubted that something as simple as "Everybody dies," would catch his attention enough to broadcast it the way Doc had heard it.

_Captain Günsche? Can he even think?_ Doc found the Captain to be an enigma. He never spoke. He never changed. His face was as expressive as that of a statue. Doc tried to remember the last time he had seen the Captain's face move at all and couldn't. _What goes on behind that mask? Is there anything? _He flinched as the Captain's face turned to his and red eyes bored into his mind.

_Everybody dies, Doc. Even - no, especially - you. _


	2. Skin Deep

Another evening.

Another night spent attempting to avoid the prattle of every idiot that nature gifted with a larynx.

Why do they think I never speak? If I spoke, it would only encourage them to talk more. _"Oh, he's _such_ a good listener. Oh, he's _so_ understanding."_ I am neither. I don't understand and I have absolutely no desire to listen to them. None of them have anything worth saying.

What is worth saying? Little.

Do they think that their brains will begin working if their mouths stop moving? Would that be worse? Perhaps it would be. Some of those fools should not be allowed near an unguarded thought for fear of the damage they could do. Smart enough to have interesting ideas; not wise enough to know they're bad interesting ideas. The Doc is a living illustration of that concept.

Zoren Blitz comes close to achieving the proper balance of silence and action. She keeps her mouth shut most of the time. Granted, she tends to be overly talkative when fighting, but that can be somewhat excused in the heat of the moment. She speaks as a tribute to the delight that battle brings her; just as she screams in the arms of her lover.

I have heard some of the men wonder if those tattoos continue under her clothes, and if so, how far they continue. If I were inclined to share confidences with them, I could tell them how far those tattoos go – _all_ the way down her body. _I_ would know. I helped ink them. Her silence during even the most painfully intimate of those inscriptions may have been what drew me to her to begin with.

It could be said that her body speaks for me.


	3. Commotion

"Wheeeee! Come here, you little treat!"

Rip looked up as Schroedinger skidded past her door. She shook her head and turned back to her music. Doc had gotten her a wonderful recording of a performance _of Der Ring des Nibelungen _and she was entranced.

"You! I'm going to get you!" A crash followed Schroedinger's progress through the hallways of Millennium's dormitories.

Jolene walked around the corner and bumped into the Major's little adjutant. With a mumbled, "Entschuldigen Sie," he hared off past her. She sneered at his retreating back.

Doors slammed open through the dorms. Wastebaskets were toppled and typed notices fluttered to the floor from their bulletin boards as a small form swept unheedingly past them in pursuit of…what?

The chase stopped abruptly. Schroedinger craned his neck to meet the Captain's eyes. He hadn't meant to step on the Captain's boot and ruin its impeccable polish. He didn't mind playing small jokes on the other Werewolves, but the Captain was a definite exception. "I'm sorry, Captain Günsche. I didn't mean it. I…umm…I was just doing some cleanup." He squirmed under the Captain's unreadable stare. He looked behind the living wall in front of him and his eyes brightened, "I have to go! Can't forget my duty now!" He ducked past the Captain and the action resumed.

Doc looked up from his notes as the sound of clattering approached his door. He flipped his lenses into a more comfortable configuration and watched the frosted glass of his office doors as a small shadow rushed past, bumping the frame on its way and making the glass rattle. _Why hasn't he grown up in the past sixty years?_ He sighed and made a note in a small notebook labeled, "Schroedinger."

"I have you now!" came the gleeful shout. The boy pounced. He turned guiltily at the sound of clapping. The Major smiled at his aide as the boy tucked his hands behind his back.

"Schroedinger, could you be a bit quieter in your pursuit of lunch? I've been getting complaints." He made an effort to look stern rather than to laugh.

"Yes, Major. I forgot myself." Schroedinger winced as a loud squeak came from behind his back.

The Major turned away, hiding his grin. At least they didn't have a rodent problem since Schroedinger had had his turn in the Doc's lab.


	4. Girl Talk

"Jolene?"

"Ja, Rip?"

"What did he say to you?"

"Who? Oh, him. He asked me how far the tattoos went."

"That's all?"

"No."

"No?"

"No. That's not all he said."

"Well, what else did he say?"

"He made some suggestions involving bathroom graffiti and any further tattoos I might obtain."

"Oh. Do you think you really needed to do something quite so…ehm…drastic?"

"What? He's alive, isn't he?"

"Well, if you want to split hairs, no."

"Ssss…he's still _moving_, isn't he?"

"Not comfortably."

"That's not my problem. I told him what I'd do with my scythe if he didn't shut up."

"But the Doc had so much trouble getting it out."

"Look, Rip, Schrödinger is a complete pain in the ass. I just returned the favor."

* * *

_A/N A plot will eventually come of these...ummm...character studies I've been doing here. I'm working on getting a handle on these largely undeveloped (to me) characters. However, it won't happen in this series of drabbles/ficlets._  



	5. Zorin Blitz

I hate them.

Who? All of them. I hate them all.

Why? I don't know. I have hated since I was pushed from my mother's body.

Alright, I do know. According to the doctors, it's a side-effect of the treatments they gave my mother. The Führer's quest for super humans. All of the children from the series of experiments that spawned me were said to have been brutally psychotic, albeit brilliant.

Am I? Yes, I'd say that's accurate.

It's the only reasonable way to be, if you ask me.

I'm happy to have found a niche for my unique combination of amorality and sadism. I don't find those terms to be negative, merely accurate by dictionary definiton.

Millennium didn't choose me because I'm an amoral sadist. Millennium chose me because I could draw people into their memories and ride along. That wasn't Doc's doing; I was born that way. Amazing what a few chemicals in the umbilicus will do, ja? Vampirism is just a sideline.

I don't hate them any less for choosing me. But I can save them for last because they give me what I want:

Blood.

Pain.

Tears.

And if we kill everyone on Earth, we're probably doing the planet a favor.

I wake at night from dreams of walking across the planet like a giantess, crushing cities under my boots. I destroy and rend and to finish, the last item on my menu of Armageddon is popping the Major's balloon under my boot and hearing him and the Doc screaming.

_

* * *

A/N A search of the 'net yielded the character of Max Zorin from the James Bond movie, A View to a Kill. Since Hirano seems to have a pop culture fetish, it doesn't seem impossible that it's the origin of Jolene's nomme de guerre, Zorin Blitz. Since the Bond character was the result of Nazi experimentation, that just led me down this path with Jolene. There you have it. _


	6. Für Elise

_tick tick tick tick_

Metronome marking the time for piano lessons. The endlessly used and abused notes of Für Elise under the fingers of a dark-haired girl. An adorable child with darling freckles and a smile that no person could resist. How could a person with a soul resist the open delight and innocence?

Rhythm and regularity are things so many humans seek. Finding it in music, in relationships, in birth and death.

_ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump_

Heart marking the time, the finite seconds of a life. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but constant nonetheless. Rapid now, meeting a man of unusual power for his seemingly low rank. A hurried rhythm in her ears as they talk about war and opera. How could she resist the allure of power and pride?

Rhythm and regularity in the discipline of the Waffen SS, in the discipline of the gun, in loyalty to her commander.

_tick tick tick tick_

Clock marking the time. Hurry! Hurry! Every second marked off. No more metronome for the little girl. No more heartbeat to mark the time. The rhythm now is the sound of the clock and…

…and the sound of an approaching aircraft. A sound that goes deeper and harsher than any beat of any time in a long life.

And she wished for the days of the metronome, of the little girl.

And she wished for the days of the beat of her heart to pound in her ears with the fear.

And the clock, smashed under Zamiel's heel.

No more rhythm. No more motion. No more.

"_Take heed. For if thou presumeth to flirt with spirits…thou shalt join them._

_

* * *

A/N Forgive me. It's (w)angsty. I suggest listening to Für Elise while reading it. I had it on endless repeat while I wrote this.  
_


	7. Everybody Loves a Picnic

_Written in response to a challenge in the Bloody Shorts LiveJournal community to write a shortfic/songfic/drabble inspired by the song 99 Red Balloons. This is set near the end of Volume 5.

* * *

_"Do you have them?" Rip Van Winkle turned to look at the refrigerated cooler in Captain Günsche's hands. She clapped her hands together in delight. "That's the last item. The men are in their coffins and ready to go." 

She watched the silent man place the cooler in the helicopter and walk away without acknowledging her any further. "He's no fun. Everyone else enjoys a picnic."

Rip was the last detail to add to the mix to be ready to leave. The lithe vampire scooped up her musket, parasol and alarm clock and hopped into the helicopter. She was so excited she couldn't stop singing her favorite song.

_Are we there yet?_

Restless, she rummaged in the cooler for a snack. One hundred bags awaited her men. One less wouldn't go missing.


	8. The Lady or the Tiger?

"Sergeant, I am most disappointed in you."

The trembling soldier watched his commanding officer closely. The Major's words seemed almost gentle, but he knew that if he was lucky, he'd only be staked out in the sun for what he'd done. You simply did _not_ muck about with the Doc's human subjects. He hadn't been able to help himself, they had just smelled so good, and before he had realized what he'd been doing, he'd torn his way through the whole cell full of them.

"Your lack of self-control has set my experimental schedule back by more than a year," came the grinding voice of the offended scientist. "Half of those subjects had already been through the first and second series of injections, you fool!"

The Major looked over to where Doc was standing. He looked ready to launch himself across the room to shred the vampire who had taken it upon himself to _eat_ an entire test group. "Major, I demand that he be made an example of. It must be clear to all of the troops just how important my work is."

"Yes, of course, Doc. We will ensure that nobody forgets Sergeant Hofstetter's fate."

The sergeant's knees buckled when the Major made his pronouncement, "Sergeant, I will let you choose," he gestured behind him to where Zorin Blitz and Captain Günsche stood, "the lady, or the tiger?"


	9. Symphony No7

_A/N Beethoven makes me think of Millennium. This one was written while listening to Symphony No. 7. The tone of the four segments reflect the tone of the four parts of the symphony. I'm not educated about classical music, I just like Beethoven.  
_

_

* * *

Poco Sostenuto – Vivace_

It's been a long half-century and more. The casting calls, the choreography, the rehearsals. Soon, so soon, we will truly raise the curtain.

It's easy to sit and to be contemplative after so many years. I love the irony of it all. That the pudgy little boy who couldn't keep up with his peers has outlived, outplayed, outmurdered them all.

Time to finish tuning my instruments. Time for waiting is nearly over.

_Allegretto_

Look at them. Every one a musician to my maestro. I can hear the sounds of violins tuning as undertones in their voices. The occasional blat of a trumpet in a shouted order. If I go outside, I will hear the percussion section practicing at the shooting range.

Even the disorder of these final preparations is orderly. It's to be expected with so many years to practice, but it makes me proud of my players nonetheless.

The curtain is about to rise.

_Presto_

Dead humans. Not much of an opening. Barely a quickening of tempo. I must add more to the symphony.

Send the Dandy. Let us see how Tubalcain Alhambra fares against the great Alucard. He ate the first boy I sent him. Will the second be as appetizing?

It is beautiful to watch their meeting through Alhambra's eyes. The Dandy is a graceful fighter, a pleasure to watch in action, but his opponent…ah, the power, the destruction and the sheer weight of his years and ego. That is the instrument of the most masterful music.

Over too soon. Too soon. Time to move the spotlights to the rest of the orchestra. One should not allow soloists' egos to get out of hand.

_Allergro Con Brio_

Time.

Time for the orchestra to begin. Time to allow the world to hear the symphony of war played by those who have rehearsed for a generation. We will bring them such music as the world has never heard.

Why?

Who asked Beethoven why he wrote his music?

Why ask me why we fight? We do it because it is beautiful.


	10. Aces and Eights

"I'll see your two hundred and raise you another two hundred." 

A hand was silently tossed to the table and the next player also folded. The two men watched each other, trying to read each other for any signs of weakness. The blonde man made his decision, "I will call," he spread his hand on the table, straight, king high. He watched his opponent, waiting for the reveal.

The man smiled and laid his hand for the others to see, "Full house, aces over eights." He leaned in and began to sweep the pot toward him.

"He cheats!" came a high voice from behind him. Everyone at the table turned to look at the speaker.

Tubalcaine Alhambra rose from his seat to tower over the speaker. "And who are you to make an accusation like that?" He stepped closer and glowered down at the strange boy. "Don't fuck with me, kid."

"Leave him alone, Dandy." Alhambra turned and stared deliberately at the hand resting on his elbow. He followed the hand up to the arm, which led to the shoulder and from there, the face of the man restraining him. He sneered at the bespectacled man.

"I. Do. Not. Cheat." He slowly enunciated and pulled his arm away from the other man's cold hand. "If you think I do, I suggest you watch me even more carefully over the next few hands. I cannot be held responsible if the cards love me." He snapped around when he heard the boy snort and leaned down to stare into his accuser's eyes. "Don't underestimate me, or you'll be taking those kitty cat ears home with you in a jar."

A woman's harsh laugh interrupted their staring contest. "Watch out Schro, maybe he'll give you the unkindest cut while he's at it."

The Dandy, as most knew him, stood and surveyed his opponents. This was supposedly a friendly game of cards, but everyone present knew differently. The blonde, eyeglass wearing man who had handled him was Doc. His silent companion was referred to as Hans by the other three; he was enormous, but had done nothing to seem threatening. The woman had been introduced as Jolene, and what a woman she was. Alhambra had never met a woman such as she – half covered in tattoos that seemed to shift every time he focused too hard on them; he could swear that the words were never the same twice. He had to focus on her untattooed half to avoid falling prey to vertigo.

And _this_ menace – he glared at the boy, Schrödinger. He wanted to throw the boy against the wall and show him just how much the cards loved the Dandy. Nobody accused him of cheating; he did not cheat, the cards merely did what he told them. There was a distinction.

With a sneer, he pushed the boy away from him. "One more hand, shall we? But let's up the ante."

Jolene blew a cloud of smoke over the table and asked, "What ante, Dandy? You've almost," she smirked, "bled us dry."

"Oh, I believe you four have something I want very much." He looked at each of their faces, stopping at last with Doc. "Immortality."


	11. Decades of Silence

_Written for Tazo, in response to his tagging me and requesting a Captain fic._

* * *

Déjà vu hardly does the moment justice, staring each other down with your wires between us like a no-man's land. You didn't expect me to let go the first time. It was clear that you had never seen anybody move as fast as you in your short life. Such a pretty child you were then, but still just a child.

Would it be any consolation to you that the wounds to my hands took months to heal and pained me for years until Doc's little shot took the pain away? Cold comfort, but x rays of my hands show notches in each of my finger bones from your wires.

Your cheekbone still pains you, doesn't it? I can see the shadow of old pain long ignored in your eyes. It mars your perfection the way your left eye wanders without your monocle. That's good. It makes you human. At least for now.

You're afraid this time. Yes, you should be. I'm faster and you're slower. You're older and I'm…older but not aged. You know this won't end well for you.

You're ready for me to drop the wires this time. You know it's coming. I hold them, savoring the old pain in my hands. It makes me feel alive – like the man you fought so many years ago.

_Without you, I wouldn't have had these decades of silence. _

My vocal cords never healed. You nearly killed me, but then again, I did return the favor, didn't I? It was so close and neither of us would have fulfilled the destiny that brought us here today – now.

You're ready for it, but you're not nearly fast enough this time. I'm saddened, really. I'd tell myself, and you, that it is a favor that Doc will do you, but fifty five years of being a mute have broken me of the habit of lying, even to myself. It's not a favor, but it is revenge, and if it can't be sweet for both of us, it can still be sweet for me.

Fight me more, boy. Give it everything you have. This is your end, after all. You won't have a name anymore, just a title. You and I, identified only by what we are, not who we are.

It's not so bad. It's quiet. You learn to live in the quiet.


	12. The Fire

Major Montana Max sat in his command chair and looked down through the immense octagonal windows at the destruction below him. He beamed at the display. This was his doing. Every death, every scream, every blessed drop of blood that was spilled was his doing.

His.

And hers.

They both understood that individuality was an illusion in war. There are no individuals, just two (or more) sides that are more accurately collective organisms than anything else. There were no Millennium _people_. There were cells in the Millennium organism. There were no Iscariot _people_, just another organism. With Maxwell's death, that organism had been decapitated. It would be destroyed or assimilated; he thought the latter. Anderson would give the body of Iscariot to Hellsing to feed on and grow from. There were no Hellsing _people_, just a singular organism with its mind and will expressed in _her._

"My warrior woman," he murmured to himself as he watched her fight her way through London. "My Valkyrie."

They were the minds of the Millennium and the Hellsing organisms. They were made for each other. No one else was worthy.

"You'll always be mine, always and never."

He knew that Dracula wanted her. His will had been formidable indeed to bring an entire aircraft carrier to London with only that will as its motive force. "Never," he spoke aloud.

He waved the Doctor aside when he leaned in to question the Major. The comment was not meant for him.

"The Fire." Max laughed and stood to pace the small deck that hovered over the command center. "It will burn us both."

He wanted her. He wanted to sit with her and talk with her and share his vision of fire and war with her. She, alone among humans had the potential to understand his vision. "It will burn us both," he would tell her.

Fire didn't discriminate. It burned everything. Millennium, with Max as its mind did not discriminate. He would teach her how to use fire. "It will kill us both. There is no place in this world for our kind of fire."

But it rises again and again anyway. Throughout history, the fire has burned again and again, only to sputter out without fuel. Together he and she could fuel the fire until it would never go out. Not until the world was a blackened shell.

"Always and never."

He looked down at the fires and the deaths and smelled the blood and heard the screams and watched the Butler as he moved toward the Valkyrie. The Butler would bring her to him and he would tell her what he had come so far to proclaim.

"If I have to die for you tonight, I will."

And Hellsing could consume and assimilate Millennium and rage across the world unchecked in a conflagration that would be the truest Ragnarok.

* * *

_Written for a quote challenge to use a quote from Sin City._

_The quote: Dwight: My warrior woman. My Valkyrie. You'll always be mine, always and never. Never. The Fire, baby. It'll burn us both. It'll kill us both. there's no place in this world for our kind of fire. Always and never. If I have to die for you tonight, I will._


	13. Think Outside of the Box

Felix spent his first year of life with constant company. It started when the newly decanted catboy was a mere kitten. His "father," such as he was, had turned his back to get another syringe, and when he turned back, the baby had disappeared.

He was found later in his crib, sleeping peacefully. No one would admit to putting him there.

This happened again. Then again. After the third time, Doc had the baby put under constant watch. No more disappearances.

After several weeks with no more mysterious instances of the baby getting from one place to another without explanation, Doc pulled the guards. The first time the mad doctor tried to draw blood from Felix, the baby disappeared the moment his back was turned.

Doc didn't admit defeat, merely made a tactical retreat. The precocious baby was put under constant watch.

He developed more quickly than a human child. By the end of his first year, Felix was able to converse with Doc as well as an average five-year-old human. Doc did everything he could to try to get the catboy to explain his strange ability to disappear and reappear somewhere else instantaneously. The conversations went in circles because one idea that Felix didn't seem able to grasp was the idea of moving from one place to another.

It got to the point that Doc was ready to declare Felix defective and have him euthanized. The boy seemed to have some cognitive disorder that rendered him unable to understand such a simple concept as movement.

The syringe was ready. The reports awaited the final data of the boy's termination. Doc sat down with a cup of something slightly chunky to drink and paged through his experimental notes. Something was niggling at the edge of his brain and he wanted to give himself time to coax the thought or memory out of hiding.

Finally, the memory crept out from under its rock. Doc looked it over and muttered, "Oh, Erwin, you were almost as clever as you thought you were." His epiphany sent him running to find Felix to test his theory.

Felix looked up from the game he was playing with a mouse and a ball of yarn. Doc gave the boy's attempt at amateur vivisection a cursory glance before kneeling down in front of him.

Their exchange would have made no sense to most observers. Felix's guard, for instance, had no idea why Doc shouted, "Everywhere and nowhere!" with such delight and began to dance the boy around the room.

Felix put up with Doc's antics for a few minutes before breaking loose to return to his now almost dead mouse. Doc turned a few more circles before leaning down and tousling his creation's hair. "You can't _go_ anywhere when you're already there, nu?"

The boy, whose name from there on would be Felix Schrödinger, looked at Millennium's mad scientist with the casual contempt of the very young. A look that said, _Of course, doesn't everyone know that?_


	14. V is for Victory?

Peace is death.

War is peace.

Death is the only end, even for them.

Max's thoughts raced through the litany, knowing that death and unwelcome peace were moments away. But the Major would have his immortality. Dangling in Alucard's grip as the fangs descended toward his throat in what would surely be brutal rending, Max met Integral's eyes and smiled beatifically.

_You will never forget me, _the smile promised. _You will never forget what we did together, you and I._

"Wait!"

Alucard paused and looked at Integral with a combination of confusion and anger. "Wait?"

"I said wait." Integral's face was stony as she approached the Major and looked his face over. He could see the realization of his victory on her face, in her anger as she searched for a way to turn it on him.

"You did not win," he said cheerfully, as though he were not hanging in the hands of the single greatest mass murderer in the history of humankind other than God himself.

Max inhaled the scent of Integral that was drifting to him over the other myriad smells of war – smoke, gunpowder, death, despair, and blood, always blood. Her scent was a thread of melody through the overall chorus. She smelled good enough to eat – cigars, gunpowder, sweat, anger, a soupcon of fear, blood, a certain feminine tang, and that newest of scents she would not yet recognize on herself. The thought made his smile broaden and turned his round face both cherubic and completely deranged at the same time.

His hand whipped out with a speed that surprised even Alucard and caught Integral's chin, tilting her face for him to shift the glare of light off of her glasses. Ah, there was the last symbol of his victory in the red flash in her irises, one of which even she was as yet unaware.

Doc's subtleties would be something Max would miss if he weren't about to die himself – who else but that crazed genius could have even contemplated the serum that even now was slowly, slowly making its changes to her body? It was so much slower, so much more insidious than the serum used on the Butler. His only regret was that he would not be there to see her reaction and Alucard's when they finally realized what was happening.

He ignored Alucard when he jerked him away from Integral and tightened his fists on his captive's collar, drawing it chokingly tight. He did not need to breathe and had long left human habits of fear behind. The only thing that the other vampire's action effected was to take away his ability to draw Integral's scent to himself.

He didn't need it. He would remember it for the rest of his life – the thought turned his smile to a laugh he could not vocalize.

"You're going to die. Alucard is going to take your soul and you will serve him as a slave for eternity." Integral said the words, but they lacked conviction.

Max opened his mouth to answer, but speech is impossible without air. Integral jerked her head at Alucard and he released his grip on his prisoner enough to allow him to fill his lungs.

"He cannot take what I do not have." Sold many years before to bring Millennium closer to its goal, Alucard could not take what already resided with another. Max looked up at his zeppelin, which still hung above the city, pregnant with a promise neither Alucard nor Integral understood yet.

She had not given up her secrets willingly, but She had sold them for a price. Alucard could not take what was hers and Max felt no fear, only triumph.

He had won. He had stolen Integral's choice from her, taking his victory over both Alucard and the Hellsing with a single simple pinprick. Integral would live – a very long time would she live, and never once during all of those long years would she forget that together she and Major Montana Max had razed London and brought vampires out of the realm of boogeymen and into the minds and homes of all of humankind. He would not die as long as she lived. Alucard would protect her for centuries, perhaps even millennia, and all the while he would know that her immortality was Millennium's doing, not his.

Memory would be Max's weapon for the rest of both of their lives

The mad Major smiled on the face of his immortality while Alucard tore his throat out and drank down the black blood that had been the fuel for a long and productive life. _I do so love war. _

_

* * *

This is so definitely AU that if you haven'__t figured it out, you owe **me **a cookie. This was written in response to a ficlet challenge from Raykat, who requested something with the Major, inspired by or using this quote: _Oh she'll kill me one day or another. But she will remember forever that I caught her, and I held her prisoner. So there's my immortality, hey?


	15. Hollow Man and Wabbit Season

_As is my habit after finishing a long story, (in this case, Scientific Method,) I took requests for drabbles in my LiveJournal. These two were written at the request of darkfather66 and Boemkool. Both are exactly 100 word drabbles.

* * *

_**  
Hollow Man  
**

"You're the one." Integral looked up from Walter's body and gave Captain Günsche a venomous glare.

She advanced on him, putting Anderson's salvaged blade under the captive vampire's chin. "You're the reason he's gone."

The Captain stared blandly down at the angry woman. After fifty-five years of silence, he was adept at reading people and he knew her anger was a thin veil over her sorrow.

Even if he could, who would believe that he was saddened by the butler's death? How to explain that after fifty-five years of waiting, he was sorry to see the boy gone so easily?

* * *

**Wabbit Season  
**  
"I didn't know it would do that!"

The silent man regarded the small figure dangling in his grasp. Without a word or change of expression, he somehow conveyed his extreme dubiousness with that statement.

"But I didn't!" Schrödinger twisted in Captain Günsche's grip, futilely trying to free himself.

The Captain turned the boy toward the smoking hole in the ground and shook him slightly.

"I know, I know. There's not much left. I'll try something else next time," Schrödinger said unrepentantly.

Schrödinger needed better hunting methods, and to be restricted from the armory. Hunting rabbits with hand grenades? How wasteful. 


	16. Hot Seat

"There is argument about the origin of the paper clip. You may recall, during the war, those Norwegians wore them as a sort of defiance against our occupation of their country. They claim it is their invention; the Americans, as always, disagree." 

The spectacled man snorted derisively and held up the object in question. "An average paperclip in the standard 'gem' shape begins as a steel cylinder one millimeter in diameter, and approximately ten centimeters in length."

He unbent the outside bend of the clip. "The first bend starts two centimeters from the outermost end of the wire. The second begins three centimeters past the first bend." He opened the next bend, leaving a hook with a slightly wobbly handle, and flexed it appraisingly.

"It reminds me of the hooks the Egyptian embalmers would use to stir up the brain of a client before turning them face down to let the resultant slush drain from the corpse's nostrils." He sighed at the tool in his hand and straightened the last bend.

"Sadly, this is too short and not quite sturdy enough to serve that function." Finally he looked up at the frightened man gagged and strapped into the heavy chair in front of him. "I suspect your brain – what little you have – has already been reduced to slush."

Blowing a few stray strands of hair out of his face, he made a new bend in the wire. "Over the years, people have found a myriad of uses for the paper clip. Jewelry, sculpture, I have even heard at least one apocryphal report of murder being committed with only a paper clip as the weapon."

He shrugged and made a matching bend on the other end of the wire. _"Macht nichts._ The fact of the matter remains that it is very convenient to have a readily available bit of wire." He circled the chair and knelt behind it, fitting the newly bent wire around a pair of connections, and tightening them down.

He stood, flipping his glasses around to look at the big man standing by the door. "It should work now, Captain Günsche. Don't let him die too quickly. That would be a waste of my brilliant improvisation."

The big man nodded and stood aside to allow Doc to leave while the man strapped in the chair made muffled sounds of negation and terror from the hot seat.

* * *

_Written for the LiveJournal community 30 evil deeds to meet the theme "paper clip." I think this meets the definition of evil deeds. _  



	17. Harmony

"Do you hear it?" 

"Hear what?" Schrödinger looked up from his video game and cocked his head at Rip. "I don't hear anything except Captain Günsche talking a mile a minute." The catboy smirked in the general direction of the silent werewolf.

The sharpshooter cradled her musket in her arms like a child and hummed a quiet melody. "It sings with me."

The catboy raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth in an O before shrugging and looking back to his game. "You always were crazy," he muttered to the screen, letting the vampire draw her own conclusions as to whom he meant.

Rip scowled at the back of Schrödinger's head before turning a smile bright with too many sharklike teeth on Captain Günsche, who was sitting in one of the many chairs in the officers' lounge reading another of his books on military history.

"You hear it, don't you, Captain?"

The big man closed his book and rose to leave.

Rip stroked the barrel of her musket. She could hear her weapon sing a song of death and doom for the enemies of Millennium. The others should hear the song; it spoke to her as little else could.

"Captain? Just tell the Warrant Officer. You can hear the song, can't you?"

The Captain stopped in the doorway and looked at Rip and her gun, nodding once before leaving.

"I told you it sings. You're just too stupid to hear it." Rip wrinkled her nose at the oblivious catboy and began to quietly harmonize with her partner.

_Sonne, weinest jeden Abend  
Dir die schönen Augen rot,  
Wenn im Meeresspiegel badend  
Dich erreicht der frühe Tod_

* * *

The song is Richard Wagner's "Schmerzen." You can find the lyrics in both German and English with a quick google search.  



	18. Medium Rare

"What the hell are you talking about you smarmy asshole?"

The woman's voice preceded her into the officer's kitchen, bouncing off the gleaming stainless steel appliances to return to their ears with an angry metallic harmonic.

Any members of the Letztes Bataillon who had been in the kitchen had intelligently absented themselves at the sound of an incensed Lieutenant Zorin Blitz approaching.

"I mean that the Captain needs some assistance with a problem and you are the best qualified among the one thousand to help him with it," Tubalcain Alhambra answered smoothly as he followed the tattooed woman into a room neither of them had any use for in years.

•••

The Captain heard the approaching footsteps, but did not look up from his study of the plan book for Operation Seelöwe. He already knew who was coming and what she was carrying, but felt no need to acknowledge either yet.

A tray clattered down, covering the plan book and forcing his attention up to meet the half-tattooed face of Lieutenant Zorin Blitz, the barest compression of his lips a loud comment on her choice of introduction.

"The Dandy says you aren't eating," the woman almost growled. "And had the half-assed idea that I'd be a good person to deliver you some food and tell you not to be a weakling."

It was even possible that Alhambra was correct in that respect. There were few enough Millennium members who would not quail under the look the Captain had just turned on her. Rip would wet herself if she had the bodily functions; Alhambra just wouldn't say it, the Doctor wouldn't care, and even the irrepressible Schrödinger had been known to cower under a Look from the Major's right hand wolf.

Thus the duty defaulted to Millennium's loose cannon.

"Eat. Don't be a weakling." Zorin lifted the lid on the tray to let the scent of barely-cooked meat hit the werewolf's senses like a slap. "We'll fight tomorrow. We'll kill tomorrow. We'll see decades of waiting end."

Her grin stretched to show razor teeth as the prospect of tomorrow's war brought out the monster barely hiding below the surface. "We'll bring them war."

They were the right words. The Captain's lips twitched to hint at a smile – an almost effusive expression from the taciturn man.

"It's traditional," Zorin continued, pushing his chair back from the desk enough to allow her space to swing a leg over and straddle his thighs, "to release a little tension before going into battle."

She leaned in to bring her lips near his ear, murmuring, "No one should face death without one last fuck to remember and want to live to repeat." At least not if they could plan ahead.

Her hands slid down his chest to cup his groin. "What do you say, hm? What's a little fucking between comrades?"

As usual with the taciturn man, actions spoke louder than words – volumes in this case, as he set aside his pen and pulled Zorin in for a crushing kiss.


End file.
